Umezawa’s Jitte isn’t just a good equipment card. It’s not even a great equipment card. It’s a card so powerful that, during its existence in standard gameplay, many decks were forced to carry four copies for the sole purpose of canceling an opponent’s Jitte (via the old legend nullification rule).

Sword of the Samurai is far from a powerful deck by default, but just having access to one Jitte card (and five or so ways to fetch it out of your deck) can drastically ramp up the entire pile’s power. While this video isn’t the best example (due to the opponent’s bad luck), I make the case for how one little piece of legendary metal can completely turn a deck from medium-rare to medium-well done.

Creatures die to removal. Thus, Swords will die horribly in every match you’ll play, unless your opponent is dumb enough to let you equip WaP or… how funny, there seems not to be any protection sword in the deck which doesn’t just protect the creature from your own spells. Clearly, Dickmons need to be the ones to merrily remove all of your shit while you’re throwing your creatures away trying to charge the Jeeteh.

The point is: If that opponent had drawn one of his ten 2 mana removal cards or just a third Swamp, you would have been royally fucked as all your guys would have gotten removed while you were topdecking for more bodies. Certainly, the Jeeteh is powerful. However, in the metagame of DotP14 where everyone is playing either Dickmons or Izzet, does it read anything other than “At the beginning of your end step, target opponent may discard a card and pay its mana costs. If he or she does, sacrifice equipped creature and every other creature you control with toughness 4 or lower. If he or she doesn’t, you win the game.”

Against a deck which literally consists half of removal, against which this one has no form of protection whatsoever except to spam guys in hopes that one will survive to untap, I’d say it’s a pretty valid argument.

Even though Toraka forgot about Oathkeeper, I hate to agree with him on this because I Love LOVE LOVE the samurai deck.
If you don’t have Oathkeeper and Jitte, you probably arn’t going to win under any normal circumstance.
It is pretty cool that Oathkeeper and Jitte equipped is GG, but the road getting there is highly unlikely.
While I agree that Jitte is an amazing card, I don’t think SoS is getting any love.

Oh yes, because a 5 mana card will definitely save you the game, especially when you lay it down before having the mana to equip such as to tell your opponent to keep instant speed death ready. Especially when it can be circumvented by simply killing the guy twice before you get another chance to equip, as many decks will have no problem doing. (When facing an Edict and having two guys out, why WOULDN’T you sac the Oathkeep’d?) Especially with the actually not too rare artifact destruction or “exile instead” clauses which avoid Oathkeeper altogether. Especially when it’s a 3 card combo, out of which two are singulars and share the same tutors. Especially in a game where even if you managed to get them out, you’d need to prevent your own death and have spare guys for the meatgrinder to charge the Jitte.

TL:DR: The deck does have very few very good cards, namely Jitte, Oathkeeper, and perhaps the Swords if they protected against anything that was actually a danger to the deck instead of just your own spells. The problem is that the remaining 55 cards are such absolute shite that even Dragons will kill you if you don’t draw your few good ones. (Yes, tutors exist. They are also limited, however.)

Maybe this is just stress and illness speaking (TTT does everything together, even getting ill when you’re about three continents apart), but I’m honestly considering just calling fuck it to that deck and write Elves instead.

I don’t know what you’re smoking Toraka.
If you seriously can’t get a deck with two of the best Swords, 4 lighting helix and MOTHERLOVING JITTE to work, you need to go back to the drawing board.

A creature with a sword on it doesn’t need buff spells for crying out loud, it’s a killing machine already. Put the sword on an evasion creature, and use the untap + bushido trick to win any combat race. Massive burn is a problem, but that’s weenie decks for you.

This deck STICKS it to Avacyn’s Glory, so it gets my vote. It asks a simple question: Did you draw your O-Rings? No? Then GTFO.

Right, the problem is not the swords but to get a arm to swing them.
The Jitte is a dream card, so I was “dreaming” alittle today to see if I could make up a card that not broken but would be perfect for the deck.

Indestructable
“Name” can’t block unless it has one equiptment added to it.
“Name” can’t attack unless it has two equipments added to it.
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I just had to share it to get it out of my mind, not saying it would be the absolute perfect card or even make sense.
But if you have have read this far I will anyway laborate on it:
* I wasn’t sure if it would have 5 toughtness to get out of most burn range or just indestructability, I wanted one but maybe not both.
* The idea is that just like the deck, it shall be very powerfull with the swords but useless without.
* I do want the one equipment unlock and a two equipment unlock, not sure if attack should be on the one and the defense on the two tho. But I think defense on the one is alright because it means that if it has the jitte it can still charge it by blocking.
* I did ponder if it could have reach, it would make it a good blocker and not just be a potential sword-swinger.
* The overall idea that it a statue that wake to life when get swords in its hands I found abit colorfull (joke on artifacts) and also it protect it from some of the black removals as well as the Chant sweeper.

There exists a similiar card, Training Drone. Coming to think of it, that would have been a beautiful addition to the deck, if Wizards didn’t hang up a dart board with all the creature types in Magic and then give a deck 70 cards which had that type, regardless of factors like being from Kamigawa.

Wing, my friend do you have any plans on releasing your dodge and burn deck guide yet or do you even working on it?

i am kinda interested in what importance you’d give some of the cards since cards like pongify do not seem that strong at the first glance but in the need i had to put 2 into my deck to handle with strong single cards (screw you CMD!)

[…] Umezawa’s Jitte is, without a doubt, the best equipment card ever printed. If even one creature connects while wearing this thing once, your opponent’s odds of ever recovering are already terrible. The fact that all its counters stay on the Jitte itself, not the creature, mean even spot removal is not terribly effective at stopping this card’s power. For more information, watch my Jitte rant video. […]